US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the recent ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip could be the last chance to secure the release of hostages and end the fighting between Hamas and Israel.

“This is a critical moment – probably the best, perhaps the last, opportunity to bring the hostages home, achieve a ceasefire, and put everyone on a better path to lasting peace and security,” Blinken said Monday.

Blinken met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday and was also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later in the day.

This is his ninth trip to the region since hostilities began on October 7. Negotiators from the US, Egypt and Qatar met in Doha last week to hammer out the latest version of the agreement. Talks are expected to continue in Cairo later this week.

As Blinken spoke to Israeli leaders, Hezbollah announced it had launched a “simultaneous airstrike” using “explosive-laden drones” on two Israeli military positions – a barracks near the border and a base near the coastal city of Acre.

Last month, Fuad Shukr, one of Hezbollah’s most senior commanders, was killed in an Israeli strike near Beirut, shortly before an attack in Tehran killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. Although Israel did not take responsibility for Haniyeh’s death, it has been blamed for the attack.

Both Iran and the Hezbollah group it supports have vowed revenge for the killings. A ceasefire is seen as a way to prevent a larger war in the region.

In his remarks on Monday, Blinken said he was in Israel as part of “intense diplomatic efforts on behalf of President Biden to try to get this agreement on the line and ultimately across the finish line.”

He said it was time for Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire.

“It is also time to make sure that no one takes any steps that could derail this process,” he said. “So we want to make sure that there is no escalation, that there are no provocations, that there are no actions that could in any way dissuade us from going through with this agreement or that the conflict escalates to other places and with greater intensity.”

Negotiators have been trying to reach an agreement for months.

The basic tenets of a ceasefire agreement remain the same. It is a three-stage process in which fighting ceases for six weeks while Hamas begins releasing the estimated 110 hostages it still holds – including about 70 alive – and Israel releases hundreds of detained Palestinians.

The mediators hope to end the war that began with the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed around 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages. According to Hamas-controlled health authorities, over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli counteroffensive, most of them women and children. The Israeli military says the fatalities include thousands of Hamas fighters it has killed.

Natasha Mozgovaya contributed to this report. This article uses material from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.